The Union’s new sportsplex was Tim McDermott’s dream. Reality could look a few different ways.

The Union’s new multisport facility at their training complex in Chester is about a lot of people, from the team’s players and staff to the city’s community. But there’s no question that it’s also definitely about club president Tim McDermott.

He championed the idea when he first floated it publicly in 2018 at a town-hall meeting with Union fans. This week, it became a reality. So, of course, he was thrilled to host Thursday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony and show the place off.

“Seven years ago, it was a dream, a vision,” he said. “I have young kids — now they’re older teenage kids — and I think along my sports dad journey, I got to see so many different sportsplexes, facilities up and down the East Coast. And as a father, you’re just privileged to be able to go to these different places and watch your kids and experience sports with them.”

That “sports dad journey” undoubtedly is taken by many fathers. But most of them likely wouldn’t have been looking over those facilities with an eye toward building their own.

“Every one of those tournaments [and] games that I’ve gone to, I took notes. I took photos of every very little intricate piece — from the food, to the ingress, to the egress, to the parking, the fields, the turf, you name it,” McDermott said. “Over the last seven years, it’s really been clearer and clearer that, yes, we could make this happen, and today is a culmination of that dream. So it’s pretty cool.”

If the community aspect of the place comes to fruition as hoped, it could have a significant impact. Along with the promise of donating 365 free hours a year to community groups, arrangements have been made for Chester High School soccer, football, and other sports teams to use the facilities. And the two indoor basketball courts will be the new home of the Chester Biddy League, a 70-year-old institution.

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“They’ve been in existence for 70-plus years and they really don’t have a home, per se,” McDermott said, “so the ability to give them a space that they can play in that’s world-class like this is going to be special.”

Though not everyone in Chester is fluent in soccer yet, plenty of people around the Union are fluent in basketball. Coincidentally, so is McDermott, who was the 76ers’ chief marketing officer before he joined the Union in 2016.

So when city officials told McDermott that they hoped to see some hoops facilities in the Union’s building, he was happy to help.

“In the city of Chester, basketball is really important and really special,” he said. “We were very cognizant of that early on, and when we met with mayors and City Council members, that was a big piece from their perspective, ‘Hey, we don’t have facilities that you might experience in other parts of the Philadelphia area.’ And if we could do something here that would tie the basketball part to it, it was really important to them, important to the community.”

Beyond the Union and community’s uses of the facilities, there will be ample opportunity to rent them to private groups for soccer, lacrosse, and beyond. Indeed, that already has happened — it started as soon as the fields between Subaru Park and the new buildings opened.

“This is a unique combination of professional athletes playing here, community using it with donated hours, and then there is the opportunity for other third parties,” McDermott said. He added that a recent two-day lacrosse tournament had eight of 16 teams come from outside Pennsylvania, and the team estimated a $250,000 economic impact on the region.

He didn’t say how he reached that number, but the point is bigger picture anyway. Not only is it fair for the Union to make money from renting their facilities when time allows, but it’s likely necessary. Subaru Park’s limitations are no secret, which puts the team at the lower end of revenue generation in MLS.

“The reality is if you look at this as an investor, as a return on capital, it’s probably not the best return on capital,” he said. “Hopefully, we can make some money, offset some of the expenses that we have. But it’s not the driver of why we’re doing it, for sure.”

That ultimate driver is the growth of the team. The Union’s academy is rightly hailed as one of the very best in the country for player development, as evidenced by its on-field successes and the number of players sent on to the U.S. national team. These facilities are designed to keep the organization at the forefront.

“When we think about bringing everybody on to one campus, having a private school, having residency, and now a facility like this, the hope and the expectation is that we’re going to attract more talent, better talent,” McDermott said. “We’re going to have those talented kids make it to our first team and perform and help us win.”

Just as college sports teams utilize new buildings as a recruiting tool, MLS youth academies are adopting that dynamic, too. The Union have a history of recruiting players from other parts of the country — David Vazquez from California, Jack McGlynn from New York, Malik Jakupovic from Michigan.

Now, the club has an even bigger sales pitch.

“Youth development is a part of our player acquisition strategy,” McDermott said. “It’s an allocation of our dollars to youth development for strategic purposes: to win, not just to develop players for the sake of developing players.”

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A side benefit of the complex is its attractiveness to teams that come to Philadelphia for international tournaments and exhibitions. Arsenal used the place last summer, Chelsea used it this summer for the Club World Cup, and, next year, a national team will use it for the bigger World Cup. Between the facilities and Philadelphia’s location relative to other tournament cities, it likely will be highly sought-after.

“We’ve known that we would be a base camp for a while, and we’ve been talking to FIFA and Philly 2026 [the local organizing committee] about what we were building, and we’ve shown them lots of renderings,” McDermott said. “But I think now that it’s here and it’s fully complete, there’s going to be a lot of eyeballs on this, and I think there’s going to be a lot of interest from those international soccer teams that want to play here.”